Made a proper DNI list if anyone cares to look. Pinning this post as well lmao.
Mainly made it to basically ask anyone that fits under anything in the list to block me to save me the trouble of doing so as much. Blocking everyone that fits under any of the things on the list takes centuries so I hope that this can make it easier for me, and help anyone that would like to block me in return since they either fit one of the things on the list, or any other reason they may have.
Here's the link to it here.
For the explanations I have I tried to be as respectful as possible for the ones that are reasonable, so I hope I didn't upset or offend anyone as that is not my intention at all in the slightest.
but THIS TIME its automatic responses to my appeals with this message in my email inbox. No listed reason for a violation at all and sent within the second I send an appeal.
I've done appeals three times now and the result is the same. I'm sick of having to deal with something like this a second time.
Apologies for posting about being suspended from Twitter for the third time but eh, I just like screaming my rants into the void to burn frustration I guess.
Honestly might just give up and not even bother anymore. Other people are going through the same thing I am, sending appeals, instantly getting rejected, some even getting their account back just to get suspended again in like a week or so.
If anyone found this post hoping to find a solution if you're also in this situation though, I do wish you the best of luck. Hopefully you'll be stronger than I am with this and keep trying lmao.
My twitter account was suspended last night for "inauthentic behaviors"???
I get all I do is like and repost stuff, but I really don't want to be posting things on a site that has horrible moderation done by AI instead of real people and owned by a complete total loser.
Sent an appeal since I at least want to be able to like things again. Twitter is how I find most of the fanart I like looking through and liking posts helps me know what I've seen before (which should be a bit obvious considering that of course you'd like a post you've seen if you enjoy it).
I would prefer to be more active here, but as far as I'm aware, most of everyone active is on twitter instead of here despite everything wrong with twitter in general. I get switching sites is a pain in the ass but honestly I'd like to be able to like and repost things freely as much as I want without having to worry about being banned just because I rarely post anything myself. Plus, at least here anyone can ramble with long posts and not have to post things part by part unless they reach whatever ungodly long word limit tumblr has.
It just feels nicer literally anywhere else, yet twitter is always where people stay despite its issues (which even I'm trying to get back into just because artists I like are on there ngl).
Anyways, I apologize to whomever ends up seeing this whether on a search, the home page you have, a tag thats used here, or where ever else because this was pretty long and honestly a nothing burger of a thing to talk about, but I want to at least get these thoughts out there in the world somewhere so here I am, screaming into the void of tumblr.
Want to know why Papyrus and Frisk are a pinch more center stage in Heart on the Table than Sans?
And (if you haven't read the fic) I'm not saying Sans isn't incredibly central and important, because he is! (And the majority of the prequels in the series are Sans focused). Just that he maybe doesn't feel as central in HotT as Papyrus and Frisk.
The answer... drumroll...
it was an accident.
(ramble under cut)
Okay (cracks knuckles) I'm here to ramble for literally no reason whatsoever about something not a single person has actually said to me. And a lot of people might not even notice the fact that Sans has a weaker character arc! But I have and I want to ramble.
To start with, the reason Sans might not stand out quite as much as Papyrus and Frisk in HotT despite being a main character with an incredibly important role comes down to one thing: his character arc. Namely, it's not as strong as Papyrus's or Frisk's. By chapter five, we'd already speed ran his character development in terms of his apathy and feelings towards Frisk! And then he settles into being a pillar of support for Papyrus and Frisk.
That's still important, of course, but it can make him feel like he's not as much of a focus.
Despite what you may think... the accident of Sans having a wonkier character arc than Papyrus was NOT because of my overwhelming love (read: obsession) with Papyrus. It's actually quite the opposite.
If you've read HotT, and read the author's notes and some of the comments, you might know that it was the first fanfiction I ever wrote. I plotted, replotted, and wrote an entire "first" draft that was 113k words long in seven months. (First is in quotations, because while I was writing I backtracked and rewrote HUGE portions of it at least three times). After that, I began to do "last minute" edits and post it on Ao3. (Which, by the time I got to chapter 7 or so, turned into an EXTENSIVE rewrite to make what is now the posted final draft.)
I!!! Frankly had zero idea what I was doing. I was just having fun with it!
And in that very first draft...? Papyrus was a background character, pretty much. He had the role that Sans has in the currently posted version - being a support with a character arc that was over before we hit the first half. The actual preliminary plotting was even worse to Papyrus.
(Like, I neglected Papyrus so badly that I had to intentionally take a pause in the later half of the fic to give him a chapter where he was prominent (what later turned into the chapter where he has a nightmare in the current version) and the title of that chapter in my notes was "my lovable boi pap needs some attention." Because he just... didn't really show up as much.)
super secret... that you may be shocked to learn if you follow this blog... i was actually a mostly a sans fan girl before writing HotT (well, i still am, but I am not as obsessed with him as I am Papyrus.) I always liked Papyrus, but I was actually rather normal about him. And Sans was my all time favorite. The obsession with Papyrus grew while writing HotT.
Meaning that HotT was supposed to be a story largely about Sans and Frisk, even IF Papyrus set off the inciting incident.
(ANOTHER FUN FACT: The entire plot with the Undyne confrontation just... didn't exist in the first draft of HotT. The chapter where Frisk died in Papyrus's arms still happened, but it didn't have the same impact on him. He was actually with Frisk during the Undyne hangout and helped facilitate it in the first draft! He had a bit of friction with Undyne, but, eh, he got over it. Big deal, right? mistakes happen! He was impacted, but not nearly to the extent he is in the current version.)
Now what does this have to do with Sans taking a backstage in the posted version?
Welp. Sans's character arc was still pretty wonky in the first draft, but he was still center stage! The suckiness didn't stand out as much because Papyrus's character arc also sucked. (no shame to past me. Yes, I think the first draft of HotT is terrible because of how much I've learned now, but also I am incredibly fond of it for being my very first fic. i'm proud of it and proud of myself for finishing an entire fic, and i like reading it to see how far I've come.)
Sooo.... with that said! Sans's starting character arc was pretty strong! His apathy turning into caring about Frisk, and learning that he really... can't afford not to care. Great! lots of conflict! Canon compliant!
Now, with that said... Yeah. if you read HotT, you might have realized Sans figured that out. As of. Uh. Chapter 5. (We are currently on Chapter 35 out of 47.)
I loved Sans so much that (back when I had no idea what character arcs or any of that shit was) i just wanted him to become attached to Frisk!! The earlier the better!!!
In hindsight, I could have paced this out much better. But. Well! It was my first fic and I hadn't studied anything about writing craft at the time.
Now that brings us to the current version of Heart on the Table... Where Sans got (what I'd intended to be) his character arc mostly closed up by chapter six or so. Yep! He's still got guilt. I'm not saying he has no conflict or that things were completely closed (i sure hope not. I've been trying to introduce a lot!) but just that I already dealt with the worst of his apathy, and he already came to the conclusion that he couldn't afford not to care. Aka bad pacing.
In the first draft of HotT, Sans got a focus from chapters 1-5, Papyrus got a bigger focus during chapters 6-9, and chapters 9-27 (the end of the first draft) were focused SOLELY on frisk's arc. (the only arc that spanned the entirety of the fic.)
Now, ideally in a story with three main characters, they would all have arcs that spanned from chapter 1 through the end.
So. We've got a problem, right? Sans's character arc is (somewhat) closed up, and while i could linger in his guilt (and i am) it begins to get repetitive since there is little forward momentum. And then we also have the same problem with Papyrus's character arc. We were stagnating with them until the closing chapters.
Now. To be clear, the story surrounds Frisk's journey underground, and there's nothing wrong with Sans and Papyrus being supporting characters to Frisk's emotional journey. But it wasn't my intention. What I did isn't technically wrong, but it's not right for what I wanted.
That brings us to now, in the final posted draft - where I changed Papyrus's development but not Sans's. Now, the reason that the story feels mostly Frisk and Papyrus focused is because I have made Papyrus the heavily flawed character with high internal conflict. Normally in skelefam fics, Sans is the one with that role, and Papyrus takes on the less flawed character who ends up playing support to Sans and Frisk's development.
Okay, bear with me here. (If you're still reading this absolutely RANDOM ramble for some reason???? If you are, here, cookie: 🍪) Why does Papyrus have conflict now when I said he had the same issue as Sans in the first draft?
Well. The reason that happened is because, as I was doing the rewrites to Heart on the Table, I got to chapter eight. By that point, I'd written well over 100k words, several other fics, and I'd done a lot of studying on writing! So the chapter was a lot better. And. A lot more emotional. And then when I came out of it on the other end, I realized that for something this traumatic, it would impact Papyrus a lot deeper than the first draft.
So, during the rewrites, I delved more into Papyrus's internal world. His guilt, his conflict, his feelings. By doing this, we got the ENTIRE Papyrus and Undyne saga. (Including Papyrus and Undyne's fight/confrontation. That didn't exist before!) In the first draft, the Undyne hangout was supposed to be chapter 12. In the current version, it starts at the end of chapter 17. Almost all of those extra chapters were delving further into Papyrus's conflict.
I had a lot to work with with Papyrus, and by this point I was still running on instinct. I still didn't have a super great grasp on character arcs or any of that shit - I just went "nah this would impact papyrus more so lets go more into it" and that lent itself well to expanding his character arc even if I wasn't doing it intentionally.
Which leaves me with Sans. I didn't even realize what I'd done until I got to chapter 21 and I went "SHIT SANS YOU SPEEDRAN THAT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT"
With Papyrus, it was a matter of not giving him much of an arc in the first place. Easy to fix by giving him more of one. With Sans, it was a matter of finishing his arc too early. Which meant I needed to change it and give him an entirely new lesson to learn.
And this brings me to desperately trying to patch that up.
I rescued Papyrus's arc by dragging it out more (aka fixing the pacing) and adding the additional important part of "you cannot let guilt over your past actions haunt you. Use it to fuel yourself be better instead of using it to punish yourself, because wallowing in it will only hurt you and others." or something like that. I gave him more interiority and depth and that helped a bit.
But Sans? I needed to give him something new to chew on. And recently I have! It's shifted in a way I'm still not the most pleased with since it's not as canon compliant? But it fits with finding home sans. It delves a bit more into his (canon) habit of sheltering his loved ones to the extent that he is harming his relationships with them, and delves into the (slightly less canon) issue of overworking and burning himself out to fix things.
I have no idea if anyone is reading this without reading HotT??? But if you are, for context, HotT Sans went from the incredibly depressed and apathetic Sans that we see in canon, and as of (very recent) chapters, we've begun to built back up to his previous bad habits. In the Finding Home series, it's been established that Sans was a massive overworker. (extrapolated on from the fact that he would "do anything to get back" and his burnout in canon).
In HotT, Sans never actually dealt with the overworking and neglecting anything and everything in order to achieve his goal. He just... burnt out. He never solved the core issues - they just got covered by different ones. Therefore, in HotT, once we got rid of the issue that was causing his depression and apathy (not trusting the anomaly and thinking everything would just… reset), he's starting to fall back full swing into those same bad habits of overwork and neglect and single minded focus.
Don't get me wrong, I've had seeds for that character arc the entire time, but you kind of have to lean into those intentionally, you know? And I wasn't doing that. i have recently pulled out the new direction by analyzing what i'd written and trying to figure out where Sans needed to grow and what I’d been already doing somewhat accidentally (and therefore weakly). The actual external plot hasn’t changed—just the way I’m writing it, and how it impacts Sans.
But this isn’t just a post of my direction that I’m going for HotT now. It’s answering why Sans’s arc’s pacing is shit (and therefore letting him fade to the background)
The problem with writing something serialized is that it's... really hard to backtrack. It's one of the main reasons that I try to write a first draft for any long fic before I post it - because inevitably I'll run into something i want to change hrough the fic. If it's unposted, it's pretty simple to just make a second draft!
But HotT was being posted live (ish). Because while i DID have a first draft, the difference in my writing level and the amount of rewrites... well. It's entirely off the rails of the first draft now and has been for a while. We've got the same destination, but we've taken an ENTIRELY different route.
So. I was winging it for most of the rewrites. It wasn't until the chapter 21 mark that I realized what was going on with my pacing for the character arcs and I started trying to fix it. This helped with Papyrus, because I hadn't closed up his arc as much as I had Sans's. I’d accidentally fixed his from the first draft, and while it still wasn’t perfect, I was able to lean into it more intentionally at that point.
Meanwhile, I was still floundering with Sans. I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn't want him to fall back into apathy and have a relapse of the lesson he'd already learned, so I had to decide what I would focus in on. And while his guilt was a possibility, (and is STILL a very important driving factor in how he acts in HotT!!!) I didn't want it to be SOLELY guilt.
Papyrus's arc is centered around guilt, and learning how to deal with it in a healthy manner and accept that he's not the one who can choose if he's forgiven. And I didn't want to have both of them going through the exact same character arc.
Now, don't get me wrong. Sans and Papyrus's characters ARE both very intertwined, and they both have very similar issues with different weight put on different aspects. Papyrus is more guilt heavy, Sans is more heavy on the sheltering and making choices for others. But both of them have both of these.
Wow this is a REALLY long ramble. Is anyone still reading??? if so I am very impressed. Here, have another cookie: 🍪
Okay back to the ramble.
A slight side track: Why did I have Papyrus's growth more focused on guilt and Sans's more on sheltering when the fanbase (including me!) normally loves to lean into Sans's guilt?
I mean, it wasn't a conscious decision at first. Because by the time I was writing more intentionally, I'd already started down this path instinctively... But I stand by the fact that it makes sense for Heart on the Table for Papyrus to have the massive guilt issues instead of Sans.
Because. Well! Sans doesn't really have nearly as much to be guilty about!
HotT is a first time pacifist run that diverged from canon at the Undyne fight. Which means there was never any geno run, never any neutral routes and judgements, and it means that we didn't even get the MTT hangout where Sans pulls out the whole "You'd be dead where you stand" card. (Which, if you've read some of my other stuff, you'll know i adore delving into. So fun!)
But that means. Sans was honestly just really buddy buddy with Frisk? Yeah, he's got guilt for not doing more to help them when he was supposed to keep an eye on them, but his biggest crime is inaction, not action. Still enough to give him massive issues here, but not nearly as bad as Papyrus's guilt.
Because Papyrus's guilt comes from the fact that he actively hurt Frisk. In HotT my whole thing is kinda... looking at the things that happen to Frisk a bit more seriously? Sure! The Papyrus fight can be seen as super fun and playful like it is in game! But I leaned into the fact that if you lose (which is easy to do!!! I lost to Papyrus all three times, HE'S NOT EASY IF YOU AREN'T A GAMER, AND A TINY LITTLE EIGHT YEAR OLD IS CERTAINLY NOT A GAMER) i digress. if you lose, he brings frisk down to 1 hp! To the point where they literally black out! And he'll do that three times before he feels bad enough to let you go.
So, while Papyrus leaned into the fun of the fight at the time and ignored the red flags, and while Frisk flirted and went through the motions, they were not having a fun time. They were doing it because they'd figured out that was the kind of thing they needed to do to get through Encounters.
(also fun little tidbit - papyrus does not like thinking back about the fight canonically! he does not have fond memories of it!!! if you call him in that room you get the dialogue "THIS IS WHERE I TRIED TO CAPTURE YOU! WHAT A TERRIBLE MEMORY!")
SO YEah. In heart on the table, Papyrus has a lot more to be guilty about than Sans! Frisk has more trauma with Papyrus! Frisk has nightmares about the fight! Which means that I wanted the guilt centered arc to be Papyrus's and not Sans's. I wanted to give Sans something else.
...preferably it would be about his apathy since that's his canon flaw in game that he needs to overcome, but as we've covered, I already did that. Alas.
And now we get to cycle back to the arc that I did decide on for Sans. ...But very late in the game. I didn't really start to hint at the new direction I decided to take Sans's character arc until the very end of chapter 30.
I probably could have pulled it in earlier, but I've been very hesitant about this entire thing because of how far from canon Undertale Sans has gotten. He started there, but I'm bringing him into a direction completely removed from what we see of him in game beyond the hint that he's burned out. (and his million side hustles. and the king papyrus ending. and- okay it's not completely unsupported, but a lot of people don't really think of "sans" and "overworking")
But, well. I've decided I don't give a shit about what people would consider OOC from canon and we going full throttle into this path with no remorse! And it's not like I haven't done the same with Papyrus. Because by this point, I've given that skeleton enough long-term, sustained trauma to drastically shift him from his canon self, too.
So.... Yeah! The long ass ramble about why Sans may seem less center stage than Papyrus and Frisk in HotT.
TLDR; (that I'm putting in the middle of this and is really just more of a summary) I messed up the pacing of Sans's character arc massively, and it took me a long time to figure out how to fix it, while I had better luck winging Papyrus's. (Mostly because I had less to work with with Papyrus and wasn’t trying to undo mistakes I’d already set in stone.)
But fear not to those who love HotT Sans. Cuz things are about to pick up for him, too!
And if anyone's curious about what spurred this post, it was because I'm writing HotT (making a backlog of chapters right now) and I'm getting really close to the end. I'm feeling... sentimental, I suppose?
If I could rewrite HotT from the start, I'd probably do a lot of things differently. I think it had the potential to be a lot better if I wrote with intention instead of working on solely on instinct. But I still love this story because of how much I've poured into it! It's my baby and my passion project, and visible progress of the way my writing's improved.
I'm actually a weirdo who likes being able to see what I've done wrong. Because if I can see the issues, it means I've grown! Every new thing I spot is something new I've learned. It's exciting! All that to say, this post is not meant to be a negative thing. It's fun and exciting for me to figure out all the ways I've grown.
WOOO that was a LOT of text and rambling! Hello? Is anyone still here?
Well, if you're still here, I'm guessing you may be a HotT reader, so... reward for sticking around? Something a bit more tangible than a cookie emoji?
Here's a snippet of chapter 36 of HotT! Skip if you don't like snippets/minor spoilers.
“The great doctor is a wonderful actress, isn’t she? She never even told me you were down here!”
Frisk swallowed as they dodged Mettaton’s flurry of kicks, pulling the emergency glitter out of their inventory and throwing it into the air. The ratings off to the side soared.
Oh. If they climbed high enough, would Sans and Papyrus see? Would it help them find Frisk?
Just a bit longer. Sans and Papyrus would come. Frisk wasn't going to die.
“And I’m just a simple robot. Her… invention.” Mettaton’s face puckered like he’d bitten into a lemon, but he smoothed it out a second later. “Yes. She’s always been a wonderful actress. But I thought we were costars. I suppose the joke’s on me though, isn’t it, darling?”
Mettaton’s freezing hands were unforgiving as Frisk grabbed them and yanked him into a dance. Smoothly, Mettaton took charge and shifted into a waltz as he spun Frisk around the stage. When he spoke, his voice was quieter, and this close, Frisk could see something odd in his expression.
…Hurt?
“She thought she was the star of this little show, and I was her side character. Who needs to tell the supporting cast all the nitty gritty little details? So tell me, darling—”
He dipped Frisk back by their waist, and they watched the ratings fly up.
“—How am I supposed to know to leave you be? She’s never once mentioned a human to me.”
(Oh ho ho ho, how the butterfly effect has changed Heart on the Table... After all, in this world, by the time Frisk got to Hotland, Alphys had already crushed her dreams of being the hero in their story. And without that... well. There was no need to loop Mettaton into her nonexistent plans, was there? This secret was not Alphys's to tell. And she is so very good at keeping secrets.)
(A shame that this created a rift in their relationship. And an even bigger shame that a certain little flower knows how to press just the right buttons to get the response he wants.)
*Note: As clarification, this post is not a invitation for concrit. An open internet free-for-all is not the place I go to for that. I'm just rambling here for fun!
Aaaand it's been almost another two years since I posted lmao-
Gonna try to be more active since Twitter terrifies me, especially with whats going on in the digital circus fandom there as of writing this because holy shit I've seen some fucked up shit there and I'd rather not become a victim to that too (even though I didn't really post anything there to begin with anyways).
SO, I'm back here. At least I'd be able to post whatever art I make without worry of random pro-AI bros in my replies shoving my art into grok or whatever. No idea what it's like here since it's been a while and I'm SUPER out of the loop, but hopefully it's more comfortable to post and just interact with people (if I'm not shy) for me.
sometimes I think about that time I watched a romance anime and went to the r/anime discussion thread for the episode to find someone talking about how in the original work, the powerless second male lead thinks about committing a lover’s suicide with the MC to escape the claws of their families, and I was like… “wow… he really is in love… why did they cut it from the anime…”
and then all the comments were blasting him for wanting to kill women.
every so often I think about the time I went to a local florist to buy flowers for the first time and asked him, “hey do you know what flowers would be safe for cats?” to which he responded, “sorry why would I know, I’m not a vet,” and I immediately realized I had a completely warped impression of the customer service I should reasonably expect from a florist due to fanfiction.
